Don’t get angry, it’s just a vending machine…right?

The World Wildlife Fund‘s Danish branch has launched a new campaign to raise awareness for the many endangered species around the globe, using Snapchat. With #LastSelfie, WWF has compared the threat of extinction of several species such as the tiger, orangutan and giant panda through Snapchat’s limited time feature. “In a way, Snapchat is a mirror of real life. The images you see are transient, instant, unique, yet only live for a few seconds. Just like these endangered animals.”

Video of the week

Well, they’ve done it again. British boy band, One Direction, have released their latest video clip for their single “You & I”. It features some simple and effective visual effects, which sees time stop and each of the band members morph into one another. It’s been online for 3 days and has so far had well over 10 million views. That is a staggering figure and what’s more impressive is that this is just standard practice for this group. Everything they touch goes viral. Enjoy the video!

Social organisation Who Cares?! have created the Helpless Machine, a faulty vending machine designed to raise awareness of domestic violence in Russia. Installed in one of the largest shopping malls in Moscow, the machine gets jammed on purpose whenever you attempt to make a purchase. This is obviously quite frustrating and is intended to be so. However, when this frustration is taken out on the machine physically by users, the woman on the built-in display reacts as if she was being abused in real life. The vibration sensors cause her to start crying and become so distressed and loud that she draws the attention from others nearby.

As the campaign says; “Keep your hands to yourself and keep yourself well in hand”. Great advice, let’s hope the message is heard.

Website of the week

Earlier this month, HBO aired the season 4 premier of its hit series Game of Thrones, marking the most “social” HBO original series debut ever. Six million people saw a tweet referencing the episode, and there were more than ten GoT-related hashtags trending on Twitter worldwide. The network itself has gotten in on the act, promoting the hashtag #TakeTheThrone which has now been turned into a digital Iron Throne on their website; Take The Throne. The throne is made out of the letters of words from fans’ social media claims and is a 3D interactive model that can be explored.

Were you ever lucky enough to get to play with a Rubens’ Tube in high school science class? It’s basically just a long metal tube, with holes drilled into it, through which you pump flammable gas. When you run sound waves into the tube, the pressure variations effect the gas and allow us to see standing waves (a visual representation of the soundwaves). Well, a group of physicists and chemists from Denmark have gotten together and taken the idea a step further, creating a 2 dimensional Rubens’ Tube – basically a big square of over 2500 bunsen burners. It too can be used to illustrate standing waves, but it really comes to life when incorporated with music. The “Pyro Board” dances along to any song that you play into it. Our prediction? Expect to see these incorporated into live theatre and potentially at every music concert you visit some time in the near future.

The video gives a great run down of how the technology works, but if you just want to watch fire dance along to music, skip to 3 and a half minutes:

App of the week

Lingua.ly is a free tool that helps you turn the web into a “personal language learning experience”. The app is available now for Android and will help you you learn more than 18 different languages including Spanish, English, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, and more.